IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIH SCHOOL GARDENS IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM 
“Back to the Farm” 
Agricultural Experimental Work in the Public Schools 
There is much agitation among educators relative to the teaching of 
agriculture in the public schools. Many states are passing laws requiring 
such instruction, and educators are holding conferences to discuss 
methods of complying with these laws. “Back to the farm” is being 
voiced through the press and from the rostrum. Educators are begin¬ 
ning to realize that the most important industry in the world has been 
almost entirely overlooked and as a result, the farmer boys are leaving 
the farms and flocking to the cities, in a greater ratio than ever before. 
Every school garden should have an agricultural experimental de¬ 
partment, where the many kinds of leguminous, and other farm plants, 
that are attracting the attention of the most progressive farmers can be 
tested, to learn which are adapted to your locality, and to study their 
characteristics. 
But you ask “is it practical? It certainly is. It need not require 
very much space, in fact we would advise against too large a tract being 
used to start with. A strip 4 or 5 feet wide along one side of the school 
ground will be ample to test many varieties. It will only require a short 
row of each variety. Place the rows a foot or more apart according to 
the variety, across the bed, with a stake at the end of each row, giving 
name and number. 
Keep a note book with corresponding name or number, in which 
notes may be taken from time to time. If you are a lady teacher select 
a wide awake boy as your assistant, making him jointly responsible with 
you for the success of the work. Encourage the boys to bring samples 
of Oats, Barley, etc., to test together, and compare their relative qualities. 
You will be surprised at the interest you will create, not only among 
the children, but the parents as well. Let the children tell the parents 
that you have some new varieties of farm crops that they never saw 
before, and almost every farmer in your district will visit your school 
garden, and the word will go abroad that you are the most practical 
teacher in the county. 
We are this season listing a few varieties of farm seed, including 
some new things that are attracting attention, which we will supply at the 
popular penny price. Each packet containing sufficient seed for a test 
row in your school garden. Probably 75 per cent of the children in 
America, and grown folks as well, never saw cotton growing. Try a 
packet, starting the seed in pots in the school room the latter part of April, 
and transplant to a sunny place in the garden in June, and you can 
mature perfect balls of cotton before frost. 
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